1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a conducting member for connecting a terminal (received within a housing of a connector) to a mating member of a conductive nature provided outside the housing, and also relates to a connector having this conducting member.
2. Related Art
Wire harnesses are installed on an automobile so as to feed electric power and control signals to electronic equipments mounted on the automobile. Such a wire harness comprises a plurality of wires, and connectors connected to ends of these wires. The connector includes a conductive metal terminal connected to the wire, and an insulative housing receiving this metal terminal therein, and is connected to a connector of the electronic equipment.
One known example of the above connectors is a grounding-purpose connector for connecting the wire to a suitable grounding portion (for example, a body of the vehicle serving as a mating member) so as to protect the apparatus and to eliminate noise (see, for example, JP-A-2003-133005).
For example, as shown in FIGS. 13 and 14 of JP-A-2003-133005, the grounding-purpose connector comprises a ground terminal connected to an end portion of a wire, an insulative housing receiving this ground terminal therein, a conductive shell provided outside the housing and connected to a suitable grounding portion, an earth metal member for connecting the ground terminal to the shell, a screw for fixing this earth metal member, etc.
In the above conventional grounding-purpose connector, in order to connect the ground terminal to the grounding portion (that is, to the ground), several parts (that is, the shell, the earth metal member, the screw, etc.,) must be interposed therebetween, and therefore the number of the component parts increases, which has invited a problem that the time and labor required for assembling the connector increases. Another problem is that it is difficult to achieve a compact design of this connector because of the increased number of the component parts.
These problems are not limited to the above grounding-purpose connector, and are also encountered, for example, with the type of connector in which a terminal connected to an end portion of a wire and received within a housing is connected to a mating member (such as a printed circuit board) provided outside the housing via a conducting member.